UCalgary physician wellness initiative expands nationally

A physician wellness program developed and led by two University of Calgary faculty is expanding nationally after five years of working in Alberta to help foster positive system-level change.

Well Doc Alberta was developed and continues to be led by Dr. Jane Lemaire, MD, and Alicia Polachek, BA'10,MA'12, at the Cumming School of Medicine (CSM). It launched in early 2019, receiving a $4.2 million grant to date. Thanks to this new $5 million commitment, Lemaire and Polachek are now officially launching Well Doc Canada to provide services to physicians more broadly across Canada.

These grants are part of the Canadian Medical Association, MD Financial Management Inc. and Scotiabank’s long-standing, joint commitment to supporting physicians and the communities they serve across Canada.

“The vision was always to ultimately provide a pan-Canadian service. It’s so exciting to finally be at the place where that vision takes shape,” says Dr. Jane Lemaire, MD, clinical professor in the University of Calgary’s Department of Medicine and co-director of The Well Doc Initiative. “As physicians, we’ve known that we must be proactive about addressing the factors that create occupational distress for doctors across the country. This new funding from our incredible partners is going to have a tremendous impact on our ability to reach more people.”

The Well Doc Initiative uses evidence-based strategies to help ensure that physicians, physician groups and health care system leaders have embedded policies, practices, and programs in their health care systems that proactively enhance the wellness of physicians. This includes providing education sessions on various physician wellness topics, helping groups to create peer support teams, measuring physician wellness, hosting emotional support sessions for various career transitions, and offering workshops about the link between leadership and physician wellness.

Positive change in physician wellness

For example, in 2019, Lara Cooke, MD'99, MSc'07, was looking for ways to support the health and psychological safety of her colleagues in the CSM’s Section of Neurology in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences. As section head, it was something she’d been giving a lot of thought. A clinical professor in the department, Dr. Sarah Furtado, MD'95, PhD, approached Cooke with a suggestion to access programming from Well Doc Alberta to support members throughout Neurology.

“We were looking for help gathering evidence and Well Doc Alberta had the instruments to measure professional fulfillment in the workforce, burnout, contributors or detractors to well-being and more. We quickly saw how it aligned with what we were trying to achieve,” says Cooke.

Lemaire taught Cooke during her medical residency and had become a mentor. They collaborated with an eye to addressing concerns like physician burnout in a meaningful way. 

With the support of Well Doc Alberta, the CSM’s section of Neurology was able to implement and monitor the effectiveness of a suite of wellness programs. The first thing they did was create a back-up call schedule — a system that was in place when a physician was unwell. They didn’t have to frantically call on someone they knew to help — a scheduled back up was available and everyone knew who was next in line.

Not long after implementation, the COVID pandemic started, and the work world changed dramatically. The back-up schedule allowed greater flexibility among the 65 neurologists in the section. In the past five years, one third of the department has accessed the back up schedule in a time of need.

“I think we can all agree that it has been extremely difficult to be a doctor in the last five years,” says Cooke. The section worked with Well Doc Alberta to develop, train and launch a physician-to-physician peer support team comprised of 15 doctors. They also invited Well Doc Alberta to present Grand Rounds sessions and host Transition to Practice sessions on Zoom to bring together physicians within their first 5 years of practice so they could share experiences relevant to their career stage.

“Today all of these interventions are accepted as department priority,” says Cooke. “It hasn’t always been that way, but there is a cultural change happening toward physician wellness.”

In 2023, influenced in part by the work of organizations like Well Doc Alberta and initiatives like the Okanagan Charter, promoting a healthy learning and working environment and ensuring wellness supports are available for all was included in the CSM’s strategic plan.

Cooke has since taken on a new role, as a physician associate for The Well Doc Initiative, focused on improving physician wellness support across career transitions, right from early career through to retirement.

“UCalgary is really the envy of the country in this space, the science that has been developed and distilled into useful tools and learning that are making people healthier,” says Cooke.

Prioritizing physician wellness

A 2021 CMA survey found 53 per cent of physicians surveyed felt professionally burnt out, with concerningly low professional fulfillment (eight out of 10) and high career dissatisfaction (nearly one in four).

“Twenty years ago, physician wellness was not mentioned by anyone,” says Lemaire. “Today we are more aware, if your physician is not well, it affects the entire system of care.”

The Well Doc Initiative uses a collaborative model to deliver services. To date, they have done work in seven provinces thanks to the contributions of their core team and growing list of more than 60 physician collaborators across Canada. Lemaire says the organization is not alone in its effort to support physician wellness — that other groups are building resources and that not everyone necessarily needs assistance from The Well Doc Initiative. She says their focus in expanding nationally will be to support where the need is greatest.

To date, The Well Doc Initiative has delivered 333 education sessions to almost 7,800 attendees from medical students to senior leaders. They have been instrumental in developing, training, launching and helping to sustain 30 physician-to-physician peer support teams with 417 trained peer supporters, as well as measuring wellness in 24 physician groups and helping guide them on how to use the results to make change.

“The new funding will be a tremendous boost to supporting physician wellness across Canada,” says Polachek. “There is still so much to be done, and we’re thrilled to be able to use our learnings from Alberta to contribute to broader system and culture change.”